Saturday, April 09, 2005

ATLANTA, April 8 - Eric Robert Rudolph, the former fugitive who evaded capture in the North Carolina mountains for more than five years, has agreed to plead guilty to bombings that killed two people and injured more than 150 others at abortion clinics and at the 1996 Olympics here, the Department of Justice said on Friday.…

Mr. Rudolph, who moved with his family from Florida to North Carolina after his father died when he was a teenager, became emblematic of a link between white supremacists, antigovernment sentiment and the anti-abortion movement. In ninth grade he wrote an essay arguing that the Holocaust never happened. For a time in his teenage years, his mother took him to Missouri to live with a religious sect called Christian Identity, which opposes abortion, homosexuality and interracial marriage.

GHARAF, Iraq -- Over the loudspeakers set up in this small town in a backwater of southern Iraq, the commands came in staccato bursts. "Forward!" a man clad in black shouted to the militiamen. "March!"…

"Wherever America is present, then there is terrorism," Saadi said. "When they ask the terrorists why they're here, they say we came to fight America. If America leaves, there would be no terrorism. Terrorism would leave with it."

I could try to write something cheery about all this, and later today I may, but right now I am going to run over green hillsides and give thanks for being able to move and breathe in another spring.

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What's this blog about?

My musings on current events, current projects, current anxieties and current delights.

I started this under the Bush regime when any grain of sand thrown into the gears of the over-reaching imperial state seemed worthwhile.

I have worked to elect more and better Democrats -- and to hammer the shit out of them once we get them in office so they do the things their constituents want and need. It's a big job.

I have endured the dashed potential for a more transformational regime under Obama. The man has made himself an accomplice in the imperial crimes of his predecessor as well as committing his own. He has also almost certainly been the most progressive president most of us will live to see. I fear we'll look back on his years in office with mild gratitude for a respite from national leadership that was habitually stupid and vicious, as well as wrong.

Visitors here will find a lot of commentary on books I'm reading. I am very intentionally reading intensively offline these days. When it feels hard to find direction, it's time to learn something new.

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About Me

I'm a progressive political activist who runs trails and climbs mountains whenever any are available. I've had the privilege to work for justice in Central America (Nicaragua and El Salvador), in South Africa, in the fields of California with the United Farmworkers Union, and in the cities and schools of my own country. I'm a Christian of the Episcopalian flavor; we think and argue a lot. For work, I've done a bit of it all: run an old fashioned switch-board; remodeled buildings and poured concrete; edited and published periodicals, reports and books; and organized for electoral campaigns. I am currently an independent consultant to organizations seeking "help when you have to make a fight."